I'm looking for advice on which board to get. I'm not all that up to date on which boards have the best bios, etc., so any insight will be appreciated.
And of course i'd be interested in any good boards that newegg didn't show as well.

Oh, and firewire is not an absolute necessity, since worse comes to worse I could always add a card.
So i'm open to a great board that doesn't have it.
But the sata 6g/s connectors is necessary if for no other reason than future proofing.

I think those are the ones that are meant to give you a little more room to control the unlocked 1155 cpus. I'm not sure what it entails, but I'd guess it's supposed to make OC'ing easier. 1155s aren't my strong suit though, so I could be mistaken.

I would have to recommend the Asrock extreme 6, I have seen a few user reviews of this board, and seems to be easier and better overclocking then about any other lower priced motherboard, if you need a firewire card let me know, i have every old card known to man sitting in a box in my basement. I have to ask if you are comfortable with an MATX board though, because THE best board I have ever used is the ASUS maximus 5 gene boards, straight from heaven I tell you, currently holding 5 world records in overclocking..

Any Z-series motherboard (with the exception right now of Gigabyte's Z68 boards) with a decent set of voltage regulation chips can overclock a K series processor. You never gave us the use for the board, especially whether you'll overclock or not.

I'm not familiar with the other brands, but I can recommend the Intel if you are NOT overclocking. My P67 Intel board, although 1 generation older, really doesn't overclock well, and as the Tom's review shows, overclocking is a second thought to Intel motherboard designers, despite the advertising.

__________________"The computer programmer says they should drive the car around the block and see if the tire fixes itself." [src]

That's Intel's attempt to say they know their previous boards were regarded as reliable workhorses which did not support overclocking well in design or -- especially -- in BIOS. Reviews of the Z77 indicate its feature set, power delivery and the UEFI BIOS along with the Extreme Tuning Utility to be at par for flexibility with major motherboard manufacturers' enthusiast models.

That's Intel's attempt to say they know their previous boards were regarded as reliable workhorses which did not support overclocking well in design or -- especially -- in BIOS. Reviews of the Z77 indicate its feature set, power delivery and the UEFI BIOS along with the Extreme Tuning Utility to be at par for flexibility with major motherboard manufacturers' enthusiast models.

Good to hear. I noticed some comments about good overclocking on newegg reviews, but there wasn't any mention of specific speeds.

If you want a really good z77 or z68 board definitely consider picking up an asus sabertooth. I just got mine (z77) and it is one heck of a board. I can honestly say it is the best board I have ever owned. Not a single issue with it so far.